I’m in Karachi after two and a half years of Pandemic gridlocks, and it’s been a whirlwind of a homecoming. Besides grappling with the major and minor curveballs that my micro and macro environments tend to throw at me off and on, I have also been able to indulge in some nostalgia: found my little book in which I’ve put down a few poems that I’d written in my teens. Even at that tender age, external stimuli hit hard! 😅 Below is one of my verses from my adolescent days.

I was walking through the woods one day
With my thoughts in a turmoil 
Oblivious to nature was I -
To the trees and the grass and the soil

I was attempting to decipher 
The meaning of strife and war
Was it political agitation
For the enforcement of a law?

Or was it as I believed the cause
Of a moment’s disarray
Of a value old as age itself - 
The simple Human Way

Where was the compassion that
Bespoke the worth of one?
Had the shield of dignity and love
Been replaced by the gun?

Where was the pride in good deeds
Where was the humility?
Was everything really shrouded by
The veil of frailty?

Frailty of causes
And frailty of sense
Had the once true noble values 
Become a mere pretence?

I was looking for the answers
I was seeking a refuge
From the grief and the confusion that
Had overcome me like a deluge

It was then that I heard whispering
The soil, the grass, the trees
“You already have the answers
Now you only have to see

When man was made a brother 
Unto the other one
The moulding of a sacred 
Tradition had begun

So when war threatens to break this bond
Their spirit shall hold them fast
For that was always meant to be
Unto the very last”.